


if.

by keeperofthekey



Category: Mad Father (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 08:11:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16572866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeperofthekey/pseuds/keeperofthekey
Summary: The Drevis Mansion had been completely isolated from the outside world, unbeknownst to all its inhabitants, with the exception of Monika and Alfred. Now, the year is 2015, three years after the If ending.





	if.

With a sigh, Dio grabbed his hat from the peg next to the front door, which was hanging partially off its hinges. In truth, his humble little house was quite ramshackle, but it was the best he could do as a sixteen year old working at a fast-food restaurant. He had been living on the streets for almost a year while saving the money to get this house. He’d really had to fight for the right to buy it. “No, my legal guardians are not alive. I really have no choice but to buy it for myself, sir.” In the end, things had worked out, and here he was returning to his job from his very own house.  
Just like every other day, he walked with his head down, staring at the cracks in the sidewalk. Don’t step on the crack or you’ll break your mother’s back! yelled a childish voice in his head. Back on the playground, in his young age, this phrase had surely been thrown around by the kids. That was before his parents died in the crash, before he came to the Drevis mansion, before his face was burned. He grimaced, trying not to recall the event. Mostly, the marks had disappeared, though.  
At the crosswalk, he relunctantly looked up (so as not to get himself run over). The counter had just reset, so he contented himself with staring at the people waiting to cross from the other side. At first, his eyes wouldn’t focus, as the beams from the rising sun danced in front of the figures. There was a teenage girl with dark hair spilling over her, and a woman at her side who looked much too young to be her biological mother. They were chatting happily, the girl waving her arms about, as if telling a story. Dio felt himself smile. Happiness of strangers was happiness to him. It had always been that way, especially since there weren’t many happy things in his own life. And somehow these people looked quite familiar.  
It was then that the bell rang in his mind, loud and clear. The little girl and the woman, the black hair and the brown, the lady and her maid!  
Without checking for oncoming cars, he sprinted across the street. “Aya! Maria! Could that possibly be you?!” he exclaimed, crashing onto the sidewalk, cars beeping at him from all angles. At first, the ladies just stared at him with wide eyes, probably wondering who this guy was that knew their names. It was Aya who remembered first.  
“Dio...?” she said tentatively, as if making sure he was real.  
“Aya! Oh, you do remember it all, don’t you? I knew you would, just like I said.”  
“B-but...” the girl pointed a finger at him, almost accusingly. “You’re dead! You were dead! You said you would burn with the house!”  
The excitement that had bubbled in Dio’s chest faded. He sniffed, again staring at the ground. “I lied. I lied, to protect you. I never thought I would run into you again... I should have just pretended not to see you and kept walking.”  
At long last, he looked up at Maria, not wanting to see Aya’s reaction, which was probably one of utter betrayal as usual. Shockingly, there were tears in Maria’s eyes. Before he knew what hit him, he was enveloped in her arms. “Dio! Oh, Dio, you’re alive!” She took his face in her hands and grinned. “You shouldn’t have kept walking. How we’ve missed you!” People were glaring at the three as they walked by, hating any interruptions to their daily commute. But this wouldn’t stop them at any rate.  
“I was just beginning to wonder if it was all a bad dream, and my parents just died in a car crash or something,” admitted Aya.  
“Oh, me too. I thought I might be feeding you lies,” Maria agreed.  
“I could never forget,” Dio said. “And I know you guys wouldn’t either. Say, you haven’t seen Ogre at all, have you?”  
“Nope.” Aya’s shyness was beginning to kick in, the one that always was apparent around the boy, and she hid partially behind Maria.  
Dio was beginning to really take in the people before him. Aya had grown a lot, and she didn’t look anything like a kid anymore. Everything about her was more developed, and the pink hair bow was nowhere to be seen. She wore a tee-shirt of a band he’d never heard of and some unintentionally torn-up jeans. A pimple was beginning to pop up in between her eyebrows.  
And Maria. Maria was a whole new woman. The absence of thinly lined lipstick and overdone eyelashes did wonders for her complexion. Those big green eyes didn’t look so scary anymore; in fact, they were quite captivating. Instead of a maid’s outside, she wore a knit sweater and leggings. Her hair fell loose instead of pulled into tight braids, and her skin had lost the pallor that came from her constant indoor prison. She was healthy, glowing, and (to Dio, at least) honestly quite ravishing. So Maria’s hot now. New developments by the minute, he thought.  
“You guys look great,” he finally said, in a summary of his thoughts.  
“Dio, your eye!” Maria exclaimed, staring at the glass thing in his head.  
He popped it out, prompting a gasp from Aya. “It’s not real. But at least it doesn’t freak people out.”  
“It does when you take it out!” Aya shrieked. “I don’t wanna see your eye socket.”  
Maria held out her hand imploringly, and Dio placed the orb in her hand gently. She studied it, finally deciding, “They matched your eye color really well. It looks great.” With a grin, Dio placed it back in its place and twisted it around a bit.   
“I really need to get to work... I’ll be at the McDonald’s around the corner. Could you come at five? We’ve got a lot to talk about.”  
“Yes, certainly. You can’t imagine how nice it is to see you, honey,” Maria smiled, adding the “honey” in the way adults talk to younger people. She placed a swift kiss on his forehead, the way he had kissed Aya before they left the burning building. They all bid each other goodbye, and Dio continued on his path as a completely different person than he had been a few minutes ago. He then remember that he was already fifteen minutes late.

**Author's Note:**

> (There won’t be any Dio/Maria at all, that would be really creepy. I just wanted to write Dio as having a schoolboy crush on her, y’know, like a lot of pubescent boys do. Nothing major.)


End file.
